The Word: Funk

The drill: Each week, I ask my Facebook friends to suggest a word. I then put the suggestions into list form, run a random-number generator and choose the corresponding word from the list. That word serves as the inspiration for a story that includes at least one usage of the word in question. This week's word is contributed by Paige Hewitt. For previous installments of The Word, click here.

Even now, all these years later, it's easy to remember when it all went down. July 1979. Jimmy Carter had just told us all that we were in a funk, only he didn't use that particular term, because "funk" isn't a Jimmy Carter kind of word. No, he said it was a "malaise," and he caught all kinds of hell for it, too. So now, I hear the word "malaise" and I think of Jimmy Carter and I think of that night in July 1979 and how my father and Roger Englund almost whipped the hell out of Rex Langley.

Dad and Roger, our next-door neighbor, worked their way through the better part of a case of beer while they talked about how Jimmy Carter was running us into a ditch. Dad said he'd be voting the next year for Anybody But Carter, and that was a hell of a thing to hear, as the old man, a union guy through and through, had voted Democratic clear back to Adlai Stevenson in '56. I remember Roger egging him on, talking up this California cowboy who was going to turn everything around, and it gives me no joy to say that, in retrospect, Dad couldn't have been more wrong. Two years later, Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, and Dad was out of a job, and Mom just indelicate enough to point out that Carter might have been a sniveling pantywaist but at least Dad had a job then.

At some point, Bobby Englund and I found our way out of the house, neither of us giving a good goddamn about Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan. I wanted to head up the street to Cyndi Ham's house, because I heard Lauri Popelka was spending the night there. But Bobby wanted to go down the street to the Tangled Briar subdivision. There was an empty lot between Rex Langley's house and Megan Witten's, with a huge, gnarled oak tree – biggest one in the county, I do believe – that we could climb into and see everything in the neighborhood. So that's what we did.

Now, I've asked myself plenty of times in the intervening years whether Bobby knew what he was going to do when he suggested climbing that tree, and the truth of the matter is, I just don't know. When I knew him – and I'll grant you, that was a long time ago – he wasn't the sort of kid who plotted out his cruelty. Sure, he could be mean and stupid, just like all of us, but I didn't get the sense that it was a compulsion deep inside him. On the other hand, I heard a lot of stories after the Englunds moved away about Bobby's mom and how she liked younger guys, and some of those stories suggested that this was why, in the middle of winter in '80, the Englunds pulled Bobby and his sister out of school and up and moved to Missouri. But it was all just talk, for all I knew, except that Rex Langley's name often came up when discussion started moving in that direction, if you get what I'm saying. So let's just say that if Rex was laying Mrs. Englund, maybe Bobby knew about it, and maybe that's why he did what he did. And maybe Roger knew it, too, which would explain why he did what he did.

All I know for sure is that Bobby had a slingshot in his back pocket and a handful of marbles in his front pocket, and when Rex Langley came outside that night, Bobby loaded up and sent one of those glass beauties into the small of Rex's back, dropping him to his knees.

"What are you doing?" I spat at Bobby. "He's gonna kill us."

Under his breath and loading up his next shot, Bobby said, "If you shut up, he'll never know where they're coming from."

He might have been right about that, if he could have held his aim. But the next shot missed Rex altogether and took out the front passenger-side window of Mr. Langley's Gran Torino, and from that Rex managed to judge the trajectory and, even in the fast-coming dark, find us in our perch.

Rex lit out, adrenaline compensating for whatever damage Bobby had done to his back, and in the next moment, Bobby and I were rappelling down the tree. We were in big trouble, I knew. The question was whether we could cut off the corner of the vacant lot before Rex closed the distance; if we could, we might have a shot at making it to the house.

I fell to the ground first and beat it out of there, making it to the street a good twenty yards ahead of Rex. Bobby, much slower than me, got to the street, too, but Rex was nearly on top of him. Bobby screamed, and I ran faster, and I heard him go down, and still I ran.

On my porch, I yelled "he's beating up Bobby!" through the screen door at Dad and Roger, and they were off the couch and past me before I could even register it, the faint traces of Miller Lite trailing them. I chased them back down the street.

What I saw next was just … well, surreal's probably the best word. Bobby sat on his rump in the street, his lip split, crying. Roger had Rex pinned up against the Curleys' spite fence, his right arm big as a maple ham against the kid's chest, holding him in place. Dad had one hand against Rex's throat and the other unfurling a spindly finger that he jabbed into the boy's nose.

"I don't want to ever catch you around these boys again," Dad said, his index finger punctuating every word. "Do you understand?" Rex, his face tear-tracked and crimson, trembling, tried to nod and couldn't even manage that.

And then, instantaneously, the fury drained out of Dad, and he released Rex – "Roger, let him go" – and he said, swear to God, "I'm sorry. Go on home."

*****

Late that night, from my bedroom, I listened to the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Langley in our living room, to the rise and fall of their anger, as they came in looking for a fight and left with grudging acceptance that Dad had messed up but had done no lasting harm to their boy.

I don't know how things went over at the Englunds' place, and Bobby made it clear he wasn't going to do much talking on the subject of Rex Langley, so here, thirty-two years clear of it, I don't have much more clarity than I had then.

Dad, I know, held the shame deep. The only thing he told me was that I'd pay for Mr. Langley's car window, and though I had nothing to do with it, I didn't fight him, because he had that look of finality, and I knew that all too well.

Sometimes, at night, I'll stand over my boy when he's sleeping, in the shadows so I don't cause him to stir, and in those moments, I think I can see every side of it. Dad was protecting his son. So was Roger, and maybe he was protecting something more, too. And so were the Langleys when they came to our house and asked Dad why they shouldn't just go ahead and call the cops.

I think about that night a lot, and for a lot of reasons. The biggest one, I think, is that there was a lot of anger in the air that night, a lot of anger about a lot of things, and in retrospect, we're all pretty lucky it didn't end up a lot worse for everybody.

That's when I get up and go to Eric's room. I look at my boy, and I know that, right or wrong, no matter what, I stand with him. He's my heart.